It'll never do down as a classic, but Manchester City and Arsenal's 0-0 draw was a fascinating one from a tactical perspective. Both Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta made massive changes to their side as the game progressed, but with the draw far better for Arsenal, it's the student rather than the teacher who can claim to have come out on top.
Adam Clery examines how, with just one slightly better decision in the final third, the 3 points would have gone back to North London.
Adam Clery examines how, with just one slightly better decision in the final third, the 3 points would have gone back to North London.
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00:00 *Ding*
00:02 Alright, so I'm going to try and make this sound as exciting as possible.
00:05 This was the Arsenal XI as they theoretically lined up at the start
00:08 and the story of the game is move, counter move.
00:12 Man City are doing something, Arsenal come up with a clever way to nullify it,
00:16 then Man City try and do something else and Arsenal come up with another clever way
00:19 to nullify that and so on and so forth for 90 minutes.
00:23 And job one was in the way that Arsenal set up and I think Arteta got this absolutely bang on.
00:28 So in possession, yes, Arsenal play with this 4-3-3 shape,
00:31 but out of possession they play with a 4-4-2.
00:34 And it varies depending on the personnel, but usually Martin Odergaard will go and join Kai Havertz up front in a two,
00:40 Rice and Jorginho sit as a double pivot and the two wide attackers,
00:44 they are a little bit more conservative, they try and block off the channels.
00:47 Now Arsenal were always going to set up this way against Man City,
00:49 there's nothing special about this, but what they changed was how aggressive they are with it.
00:53 Now you may, Arsenal fans, remember last season where you were really aggressive in the press at the Etihad
00:59 and City pulled you left, they pulled you right and then they pulled your pants down.
01:03 But their approach today was far more effective,
01:05 because instead of Havertz and Odergaard pressing the two centre-backs here,
01:08 instead they just went and sat on the two pivots.
01:11 Now this presented quite the head-scratcher to Manchester City,
01:14 because normally with either a centre-back stepping forward or one of the full-backs coming across,
01:18 they would attempt to outnumber teams 4-3 in this middle area,
01:22 but they're already starting at a disadvantage.
01:25 Arsenal effectively had a box to stop their box.
01:28 What it meant was even if they did end up doing that,
01:31 let's say Kovacic pushed a little bit forward and Nkangi came into one of the pivots,
01:35 they've not created any advantage at all there, it's still just 4v4,
01:39 and now they've left one of Arsenal's attackers totally free.
01:42 But move, counter move, Pep then said basically,
01:45 "Alright, okay, let's forget the box, let's not try and get anybody too far out of position,"
01:48 and instead had his two wide players, say hello to Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva,
01:53 come incredibly, incredibly narrow.
01:55 And we can see this very neatly represented in City's average positions in this,
01:59 because it's normally the job of the two wide players, you know this,
02:01 to stay as wide as possible, to stretch the opposition defence across the line,
02:06 and leave these little gaps in the half-space for the more creative players,
02:09 but it didn't do that, they came inside and that made a 5v4.
02:14 But Arsenal, whether they predicted this happening,
02:16 or they were just very good at dealing with it on the fly,
02:18 were absolutely fine with it, and went incredibly narrow themselves,
02:22 to just congest the entire centre of the pitch.
02:24 The defence massively compacted, which just completely locked down Erling Haaland,
02:29 and ensured that if City did get the overload here with one of these extra players,
02:33 there was always somebody who could aggressively jump out of that back line, and even things up.
02:37 And by and large, for that first half, this worked really well for Arsenal,
02:41 like Nathan Ake should probably score from that corner, I think it is,
02:44 but they don't create anything really in open play.
02:46 Erling Haaland has four touches of the ball in the entire opening 45.
02:51 And I mean, obviously the payoff to this is that they can't get anything going the other way,
02:55 they don't really make any chances of their own,
02:57 but they are playing City at the Etihad, and restricting them that much is a huge tactical win.
03:02 But of course, move, counter move.
03:05 Towards the end of the first half, Nathan Ake picks up an injury,
03:09 and is replaced by Rico Lewis.
03:11 Now you would assume, given that everyone else in the back line is a central defender,
03:15 you just stick one of them in the middle, then Lewis out at the full-back positions,
03:19 and then if you want to invert them, you can.
03:21 But Pep does not do that.
03:23 Instead, he sticks Rico Lewis straight into the midfield with Kovacic and Rodri.
03:29 Now you might think, "Oh, that's quite clever, isn't it?
03:31 Because Arsenal aren't pressing the centre-back, you might as well have another person there,
03:35 so you don't need both of these players to come off the wing,
03:38 so now one of them can potentially get into the space that Arsenal are leaving by being quite narrow."
03:43 But that's not what they were trying to do.
03:45 What Kovacic did was effectively a reverse John Stones.
03:49 Rather than moving into the midfield from the defence,
03:52 he started to move into the defence from the midfield.
03:56 And, oh, what on earth? Why would you do that?
03:59 Well, Arsenal now have two conflicting instructions, don't they?
04:05 Because instruction number one is, "Don't press the centre-backs,"
04:08 but instruction number two is, "Sit on Kovacic."
04:11 And you can't do both.
04:12 And it was actually right here where Guardiola very briefly did start to win that tactical battle,
04:17 because Arsenal could not allow Kovacic to have that much time on the ball.
04:21 He was so much better with it than the other centre-backs would have been,
04:24 so they did occasionally get drawn out of their shape to press him and deny him that time.
04:28 And then all of a sudden, that meant that he could just knock the ball into these wider areas where they had an overload.
04:34 And it was this breaking of the shape here, combined with the narrowness that Arsenal had at the back,
04:38 that led to Man City's best opportunities for most of the game.
04:42 And they usually involved Guardiola, or was occasionally Acanji on the other side,
04:46 but it was usually Guardiola getting all the way down the left-hand side unchallenged.
04:51 And you can just see how all these little problems are leading to that happening.
04:55 Like, either Kovacic is getting the sort of time on the ball required to find him,
04:59 or they are pressing up onto him because they can't let him have that time,
05:02 and someone in the middle of the pitch is having the time to then find him.
05:05 But move and counter-move, and this might be the best one of the entire game,
05:10 because Arteta could see that Guardiola was getting down the left-hand side.
05:13 He could see all the time and all the space he had, and his ability to float the ball into the box.
05:17 And he said...
05:20 So f***ing what?
05:21 Guardiola is not some great crosser of the ball.
05:24 Silva and Foden, who could be arriving into the box, are not massive aerial threats,
05:28 and they always had Erling Haaland two-on-one,
05:31 so Arteta was quite happy for Guardiola to just swing that ball in unmarked from the left-hand side.
05:37 And you can see here, he had six goes at it.
05:39 He missed with five of them.
05:41 And the one that did find Erling Haaland's head,
05:43 he was double-marked and it was no threat whatsoever.
05:46 Like, that's a very brave system to employ.
05:49 Just let them have it, but it worked.
05:51 But, and I'm getting so sick of saying this, move and counter-move.
05:56 Arsenal are really narrow.
05:57 City's only source of joy is down both the flanks.
06:00 So Pep goes full chaos mode and brings on both Grealish and Docu at the same time.
06:06 And kind of goes to this, like, 3-3-3-1, I think.
06:12 Like, it was quite hard to work out where Bernardo Silva was supposed to be in all of this,
06:16 but it kind of, they did just have three players here,
06:19 and there were three who were receiving the ball,
06:21 and obviously they were there in hot...
06:22 I think this is what they were doing.
06:23 It was something like this.
06:24 So now, when the ball did find either of these players,
06:27 let's take Ben White, for example,
06:28 he had to go out and stop Grealish having the time and space,
06:31 because he really could do something with it.
06:33 And that, by extension, allowed Kevin De Bruyne to get into the half spaces
06:37 the first time they'd open up,
06:39 which would force one of the Arsenal centre-backs to cover across,
06:41 leaving Haaland for the first time in the game,
06:44 finally, one-on-one with a defender.
06:46 But come on now, everybody, say it with me.
06:48 Move, counter-move.
06:51 Jack Grealish, obviously fantastic on the ball,
06:53 but Ben White had a pretty good handle on him.
06:55 He didn't look like he was going to fly past him at any point.
06:57 The really exciting bit was Doku versus Kyrielle.
07:01 Like, in regards of creating space on a football pitch,
07:05 a flying winger versus a centre-back in a wide area is like curry to a pisshead.
07:12 Hence why it lasted exactly four minutes.
07:16 More or less the second Jeremy Doku got on that football pitch,
07:19 Arteta immediately had Tom Iasi warm up, got him straight on the pitch,
07:23 put him out on that side and shut down Doku in any real serious way.
07:28 And I actually don't think anything typifies precisely why Arsenal
07:32 were able to get a point in this match quite like that,
07:35 because this is all tinkering and chess and nerd stuff.
07:38 On the actual pitch, it comes down to individual battles.
07:42 Like, OK, you're going to double up on Erling Haaland,
07:45 but if he just does really well and beats those two defenders,
07:47 he might still score.
07:49 And over there, that's a great idea.
07:51 Get a proper full back on to stop the proper winger,
07:54 but it only works if he does his job.
07:56 And Tom Iasi absolutely did that job brilliantly,
08:00 just like every other player in this Arsenal side.
08:03 But my dear friends, I must now enter into the second part of this video
08:07 because I have seen people slating Arsenal for this sort of negative
08:11 anti-football approach and that they definitely just turned up
08:15 to try and get a nil-nil, right?
08:16 Well, no, they definitely turned up to try and win this game.
08:21 They had a plan to score the goal that would do that,
08:24 and it very, very nearly worked.
08:28 Now, Arsenal only had something like 27% possession in this game,
08:32 which is a season low by some distance for them.
08:35 And that's because their main priority every time they had the ball
08:39 was just don't give it away somewhere stupid.
08:42 And the best illustration of this by a mile is in David Reier's distribution.
08:46 Like, the guy plays short, he gets involved with the defence,
08:49 he sometimes even works as a third centre-back.
08:52 But here today, he was going long pretty much every single time.
08:57 And that's because for large parts of this game,
08:59 Arsenal didn't really want the ball.
09:01 They didn't want to try and play through Man City.
09:03 They wanted City to try and play through them,
09:05 so they might take it off them.
09:07 But their plan, pretty clearly, I think,
09:09 was to do this for long enough in the game
09:11 that you effectively, like, open up the areas required
09:15 to then go and steal it.
09:17 Everything about the way Arsenal set up in this game,
09:19 from how their back four was structured
09:21 to how they were pressing encouraged narrowness, right?
09:23 It was funnelling everything into the centre of the pitch.
09:26 While it was making them really hard to play through,
09:27 it was also inviting Man City with the temptation
09:31 to commit players out wide,
09:32 because that's where the space was.
09:34 And if you're going to hurt them, you need to use the space.
09:36 And then in the 85th minute,
09:38 you very nearly saw precisely why they were doing this.
09:42 They finally find Martin Oerdegaard in between the lines,
09:46 in a central space, able to play the ball forward.
09:49 And both of the correct runs from the substitutes,
09:52 bear in mind, the fresh players they've brought on,
09:55 Trossard and Martinelli, are perfectly timed
09:58 into the space that City have left in the wide areas.
10:02 The ball from Oerdegaard is perfect.
10:05 And I think genuinely, Leandro Trossard could
10:08 and should knock this first time into the path of Martinelli
10:12 and all of a sudden, Arsenal have created
10:15 the best chance in the entire game
10:18 and something they probably should win it from.
10:20 But instead, his touch just isn't quite perfect
10:23 and he allows the defender to cover over him
10:25 by the time he does get it under control,
10:27 City have got players back.
10:29 But I just saw in this moment, this entire plan,
10:33 the structure, the discipline, the changes, everything,
10:36 almost coming together perfectly.
10:39 But it didn't.
10:41 But do you want to know what the ultimate bit
10:43 of stylistic adaptation was on Arsenal's behalf?
10:46 Oh, you do? Good, right, I'll tell you.
10:47 Normally, Arsenal concede around nine fouls per game
10:51 in the Premier League, actually puts them second lowest
10:53 in the division for that particular stat.
10:55 But today in this game, they conceded 20 fouls.
11:00 And that is because you can do all the nerd stuff
11:02 in the world, you can pour over all the geeky data,
11:05 you can have such ingrained footballing philosophy.
11:08 Sometimes nothing just beats the approach of
11:12 just kick 'em lads.
11:13 If you're not sure what to do, just kick 'em.
11:16 And do you know what? Fair play.
11:18 And that was that, wasn't it?
11:21 I do think the point for Arsenal away at the Etihad,
11:23 taking four points from City
11:25 when they gave them six last season is absolutely enormous
11:29 and could probably be the thing
11:30 that does ultimately win them the title,
11:32 but it's in Liverpool's hands now, isn't it?
11:34 And none of them play each other again.
11:36 So this is going to be fun.
11:38 Anyway, though, if you're sitting there at home
11:40 wondering how on earth I pulled that much content
11:42 out of such a dull game, then I don't know either,
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12:00 The last few days to grab a copy
12:02 of the Trent Alexander Arnold issue of 442,
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12:07 Honestly, I am, even though I work here.
12:10 But until next time, that was it, I think.
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12:21 before I go.
12:22 Yeah, hope you're having a nice bank holiday.
12:25 I'm not, bye.
12:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]